Future Heavyweight Torpedo Development

whatismoo said:
Let's try to keep on topic about future heavyweight torpedo development folks
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1. You must be new here;)

2. Out of about 200 posts, about 20 of em have been about truly new/significantly upgraded torps

3. Modern or 1980s Undersea warfare against serious opponents is sort of a sub topic. I’ve learned quite a bit. Hopefully I contributed a bit too.
 
Bruno Anthony said:
Potential spilling of large amounts of core material and weapons grade stuff would alone be a disaster .
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Given that the US has catastrophically lost 2 boats with hull implosions, one with full combat load including a couple of SUBROCs, the reactor vessels and nuclear warheads don't get broken up. They may not land on the same patch of bottom if you manage to break the boat in half, but there is very little radioactivity outside the hull of any lost SSN.
 
Plus it be the REACTOR fuel that's the issue.

Nuke warhead materials are basically inert to the point that they don't show up on dosage badges.
 
Bruno Anthony said:
1. You must be new here;)

2. Out of about 200 posts, about 20 of em have been about truly new/significantly upgraded torps

3. Modern or 1980s Undersea warfare against serious opponents is sort of a sub topic. I’ve learned quite a bit. Hopefully I contributed a bit too.
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I'll be honest I commented after typing out a summary of a bunch of my doctoral work on the Gorshkov witholding doctrine and Dismukes relationship with it and realizing I didn't want to get smacked by the mods.
 
Firefinder said:
Plus it be the REACTOR fuel that's the issue.

Nuke warhead materials are basically inert to the point that they don't show up on dosage badges.
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If you don't breach the reactor vessel, you don't have a mess.

The reactors all go into full shutdown if there's any flicker of power supply to the control rod latches. Those control rods will also drop the rods in case of a close-aboard explosion. In either case, instant reactor scram.

You would have to breach the hull AND the reactor vessel to get a release of radiation. Not a single sunk nuclear sub has managed to do that.
 
whatismoo said:
I'll be honest I commented after typing out a summary of a bunch of my doctoral work on the Gorshkov witholding doctrine and Dismukes relationship with it and realizing I didn't want to get smacked by the mods.
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Would be interested in reading that if your willing to start a dedicated thread for it.
 
whatismoo said:
I'll be honest I commented after typing out a summary of a bunch of my doctoral work on the Gorshkov witholding doctrine and Dismukes relationship with it and realizing I didn't want to get smacked by the mods.
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Start a thread
 
Scott Kenny said:
Given that the US has catastrophically lost 2 boats with hull implosions, one with full combat load including a couple of SUBROCs, the reactor vessels and nuclear warheads don't get broken up. They may not land on the same patch of bottom if you manage to break the boat in half, but there is very little radioactivity outside the hull of any lost SSN.
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Well, let’s look at a war scenario where say you have for purpose of discussion 30 downed subs. Older Soviets/Russian subs have 2 reactors so say ~40 reactors down after having been hit with at least one heavy torpedo. Say 3 reactors spill their uranium. Sounds like an ecological disaster.
 
Bruno Anthony said:
Well, let’s look at a war scenario where say you have for purpose of discussion 30 downed subs. Older Soviets/Russian subs have 2 reactors so say ~40 reactors down after having been hit with at least one heavy torpedo. Say 3 reactors spill their uranium. Sounds like an ecological disaster.
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The dangerous distance from spent nuclear fuel in water is less than 3 meters.
 
whatismoo said:
I'll be honest I commented after typing out a summary of a bunch of my doctoral work on the Gorshkov witholding doctrine and Dismukes relationship with it and realizing I didn't want to get smacked by the mods.
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Start a thread, I'm interested in it.
 
Also the ocean is so saturated with uranium that we can legit Filter Mine the stuff.

As in with Special ceramic filters we can pump raw ocean out, pull Uranium from the water and dump everything else back in and make a Damn Profit.


The ocean literally can not hold any more dissolved uranium.
 
Scott Kenny said:
The dangerous distance from spent nuclear fuel in water is less than 3 meters.
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So why bother continuing the occasional radiation tests the USN performs with the Scorpion remains?

While we always assess first the immediate danger to human life, acquatic life exposed to concentrated uranium probably wouldn’t do wonders for them.
 
Bruno Anthony said:
While we always assess first the immediate danger to human life, acquatic life exposed to concentrated uranium probably wouldn’t do wonders for them.
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As pointed out by another poster there's already plenty of dissolved Uranium in seawater, that sounds like the witless hysteria Greenpeace spreads.
 
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NMaude said:
As pointed out by another poster there's already plenty of dissolved Uranium in seawater, that sounds like the like witless hysteria Greenpeace spreads.
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We can ask a sea biologist about specifics on such a scenario .As for Bradford Dismukes being “witless”, I’ll pass. I may be witless and maybe it’s me, but large quantities of exposed high grade uranium sounds like something bad. Happy to be proven wrong. But um, pretty sure we try to keep that stuff under wraps.
 
Bruno Anthony said:
We can ask a sea biologist about specifics on such a scenario .As for Bradford Dismukes being “witless”, I’ll pass. I may be witless and maybe it’s me, but large quantities of exposed high grade uranium sounds like something bad. Happy to be proven wrong. But um, pretty sure we try to keep that stuff under wraps.
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Remember how big the oceans are.

Seawater holds roughly 3 parts per billion, or 3 micrograms per liter. 3 milligrams per cubic meter (aka ton). The volume of the oceans is roughly 1.37x10^18, which will make roughly 4.5 billion tons of uranium in the oceans.

The couple thousand tons you're talking about is not even going to be noticed.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Remember how big the oceans are.

Seawater holds roughly 3 parts per billion, or 3 micrograms per liter. 3 milligrams per cubic meter (aka ton). The volume of the oceans is roughly 1.37x10^18, which will make roughly 4.5 billion tons of uranium in the oceans.

The couple thousand tons you're talking about is not even going to be noticed.
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It came up in the blog post by Dismukes but I guess I own it now, fine. I’ll play the designated party pooper.

“I’m” talking about those couple thousand tons in a very concentrated amount in a relatively small area.

We all can at least agree that exposure to unshielded HEU is a health risk, right?
 
Bruno Anthony said:
It came up in the blog post by Dismukes but I guess I own it now, fine. I’ll play the designated party pooper.

“I’m” talking about those couple thousand tons in a very concentrated amount in a relatively small area.

We all can at least agree that exposure to unshielded HEU is a health risk, right?
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Again, radiation danger range is only about 2-3m. And then it disperses as the ocean flows around.
 
Arjen said:
Sea life food chains have the nasty habit of collecting, then concentrating some pollutants. Especially non-biodegradable pollutants. If that sea life is palatable to humans, it will at times show up in our diet.
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While true, but I'm not sure that uranium or plutonium concentrates that way. Yes, mercury does concentrate.
 
It starts with plankton and benthos collecting matter they are unable to filter out. Mercury, actinoids - harmful, of no nutritional value to them, but these will be ingested anyway.
The closer you get to the top of the food chain, the more harmful matter you will find.
Humans live at the top of the pyramid.
 
Scott Kenny said:
While true, but I'm not sure that uranium or plutonium concentrates that way. Yes, mercury does concentrate.
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It took 15 days for the unfissioned plutonium from Castle Brave shot Baker to bioaccumulate in a sturgeonfish to a level that enabled an autoradiograph to be taken just by leaving the fish on an X-Ray plate overnight.

And that was from just 10lb of plutonium being released into the lagoon

Plutonium is actually one of the nastier heavy metals because it gets substituted for calcium (much like radium)
 
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Cthell said:
It took 15 days for the unfissioned plutonium from Castle Brave shot Baker
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Operation Crossroads not Castle (That happened in 1954).

Cthell said:
And that was from just 10lb of plutonium being released into the lagoon
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This was from an exploded fission-bomb, a nuclear-reactor in a sunk SSN or SSBN wouldn't do that unless it had been explosively breached by a direct torpedo impact.
 
NMaude said:
Operation Crossroads not Castle (That happened in 1954).
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Well, that's an embarrasing mixup - I even checked the details and still got the names muddled

NMaude said:
This was from an exploded fission-bomb, a nuclear-reactor in a sunk SSN or SSBN wouldn't do that unless it had been explosively breached by a direct torpedo impact.
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Of course - it's just a nice example of how quickly environmental plutonium bio-accumulates. 5kg of plutonium finely dispersed in 2 million cubic meters of water (the amount of water lofted by the detonation) is a concentration of ~2.5 micrograms/litre, or roughly 10 nanomol/litre (I think I got the maths on that right?)
 
Bruno Anthony said:
There have been/are attempts to quiet the Mk 48 and the proposed Mod 9 seeks to replace the propulsion system.

The Spearfish generates (I read somewhere but don’t have a link) about 2x the horsepower of the 48 at around 1000. It’s gas turbine was the one used in the Mk 48 Mod 0 that competed with the swashplate powered Mod 1.
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May be of some interest to note that Spearfish was compared to mk48 in 1992 by MoD, they found mk48 ADCAP (I forget which mod it was at this time) failed to meet the Spearfish requirement in detection range and stealth (former is pretty obvious I think, was a newer weapon at the time), the turbine appears to have been driven by signature demands above all else.

Also note that the turbine in spearfish (pre Mod 1) also has HAP, which pretty significantly boosts the power density of the fuel onboard, credited with some 35% extra endurance and significantly improved performance at depth (speed reductions starting 100's of meters later).

This leads me to wonder what the RN have been thinking with Mod 1 though, as the HAP has been deleted- doubt they would be willing to accept a 35% loss of endurance and large speed reductions at depth! So what have they changed?? Ostensibly the same turbine powers it.
 
EWPT2 said:
May be of some interest to note that Spearfish was compared to mk48 in 1992 by MoD, they found mk48 ADCAP (I forget which mod it was at this time) failed to meet the Spearfish requirement in detection range and stealth (former is pretty obvious I think, was a newer weapon at the time), the turbine appears to have been driven by signature demands above all else.

Also note that the turbine in spearfish (pre Mod 1) also has HAP, which pretty significantly boosts the power density of the fuel onboard, credited with some 35% extra endurance and significantly improved performance at depth (speed reductions starting 100's of meters later).

This leads me to wonder what the RN have been thinking with Mod 1 though, as the HAP has been deleted- doubt they would be willing to accept a 35% loss of endurance and large speed reductions at depth! So what have they changed?? Ostensibly the same turbine powers it.
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Wonder if the switch to a digital seeker and fiber vice wire guidance would save enough space to increase the fuel capacity to conpansate.

There might also be some willingness to compromise on some performance since the very fast deep-diving subs that drove that requirement are now in short supply.
 
TomS said:
Wonder if the switch to a digital seeker and fiber vice wire guidance would save enough space to increase the fuel capacity to conpansate.

There might also be some willingness to compromise on some performance since the very fast deep-diving subs that drove that requirement are now in short supply.
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I doubt it? They specifically considered an Otto fuel only Spearfish (for cost savings) and found it hurt performance below I think it was 150 meters (plus the 35% range), with speeds dropping below 50 knots at deep depth (given as 800 meters). I infer that this proposal would have replaced the HAP space with Otto fuel ofc. Would be surprised if the savings in electronics space was equivalent to 1/3rd of your fuel volume. Interestingly in said analysis the reference target was 34 knots, not the higher speeds of Alfa or Papa so they appear to have been not very concerned by Alfa as of 1992.

The speed reduction hitting so shallow (obviously, it is gradual but it would be unable to sustain the requirement speed below 150 meters) seems likely to be unacceptable vs current Russian SSN's imo. There may well be changes in mod 1 that are unannounced, as is often the case with torpedoes. Tweaking the power plant somehow?
 
Hmm. I wonder if the single fuel in Mod 1 is pure Otto II after all. I found a surprisingly old patent on various things you can add to Otto II that make it even more energetic while remaining a monopropellant. It's conceivable that the RN found something like this that let them retain the performance of HAP+Otto II without requiring two separate tanks.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5256220A/en
100% wild-assed speculation here, of course.
 
Good point, quick google only finds reference to "safer" fuel from government proper (and even then they could ofc, just lie). Would go a long way to explaining it. I just struggle to see them being willing to take such a big hit.

My numbers for said performance decrease come from some national archives documents released a few years ago (2021 iirc), so I am confident they are at least ballpark accurate. I really need to get back there, have such a long list of torpedo stuff to look at....
 
TomS said:
Hmm. I wonder if the single fuel in Mod 1 is pure Otto II after all. I found a surprisingly old patent on various things you can add to Otto II that make it even more energetic while remaining a monopropellant. It's conceivable that the RN found something like this that let them retain the performance of HAP+Otto II without requiring two separate tanks.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5256220A/en
100% wild-assed speculation here, of course.
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That would be my suspicion. Spiked Otto II, so it's a pure monopropellant without needing a separate tank of HAP.

EWPT2 said:
Good point, quick google only finds reference to "safer" fuel from government proper (and even then they could ofc, just lie). Would go a long way to explaining it.
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Or it's safer as in less flammable. Safer to handle, not that you want to spend a lot of time exposed to the stuff.


EWPT2 said:
I just struggle to see them being willing to take such a big hit.
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Me too. I can't see any military taking a 35% range hit plus a speed hit.
 
Scott Kenny said:
That would be my suspicion. Spiked Otto II, so it's a pure monopropellant without needing a separate tank of HAP.


Or it's safer as in less flammable. Safer to handle, not that you want to spend a lot of time exposed to the stuff.



Me too. I can't see any military taking a 35% range hit plus a speed hit.
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Yeah, I don't think it's super surprising they wanted rid of the HAP! Nasty stuff. (So nasty in fact that it is not introduced to the turbine until it clears the tube for safety reasons) Tend to lean towards agreeing with Tom's idea.
 
TomS said:
Hmm. I wonder if the single fuel in Mod 1 is pure Otto II after all. I found a surprisingly old patent on various things you can add to Otto II that make it even more energetic while remaining a monopropellant. It's conceivable that the RN found something like this that let them retain the performance of HAP+Otto II without requiring two separate tanks.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5256220A/en
100% wild-assed speculation here, of course.
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Good call, these are interesting. Even if none of these quite give the Otto + HAP performance, getting rid of HAP entirely and getting a somewhat larger Otto fuel tank with a more energetic mixture might be much preferrable.
The patents even mention that some of these mixtures are (considerably) less toxic than Otto II on it's own. Because Otto fumes are not exactly something you want in your boat either...
 
Something odd here, while Otto II monopropellant has a wikipedia page Hydroxyl Ammonium Perchlorate (HAP) doesn't appear to have a wikipedia page.
 
I would hope they explored jettisoning battery packs to extend range on electric torpedoes. Starts off the full diameter torpedo then discards dead packs as it goes. Lightens the torpedo and reduces parasitic drag. Instead of neutral buoyancy, go for maximum power density, and utilize folding fins and sensors to control depth. Gravity might even be used to enhance acceleration.
 
MihoshiK said:
Good call, these are interesting. Even if none of these quite give the Otto + HAP performance, getting rid of HAP entirely and getting a somewhat larger Otto fuel tank with a more energetic mixture might be much preferrable.
The patents even mention that some of these mixtures are (considerably) less toxic than Otto II on it's own. Because Otto fumes are not exactly something you want in your boat either...
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Otto fumes themselves aren't bad.

Otto combustion products will kill you very, very dead.
 
Oops, missed this one somehow.
MadRat said:
I would hope they explored jettisoning battery packs to extend range on electric torpedoes. Starts off the full diameter torpedo then discards dead packs as it goes. Lightens the torpedo and reduces parasitic drag. Instead of neutral buoyancy, go for maximum power density, and utilize folding fins and sensors to control depth. Gravity might even be used to enhance acceleration.
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Except that the propulsor is aft of the batteries, while the battery pack is roughly amidships and the warhead and guidance are forward.

No easy way to drop the batteries without really messing up the hydrodynamics.
 

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